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Each entry has two separate plots. The first is set in the 21st century, where the battle between the Assassins and Templars has become one largely about information control, media manipulation and occasional cloak-and-dagger black-ops skirmishes. However, this is only the Framing Device; the vast majority of the action is set in the historical plotlines, which include The Crusades, The Renaissance, The American Revolution, The Golden Age of Piracy, The French Revolution, Victorian Britain, Ptolemaic-Era Egypt, and The Peloponnesian War. The expanded backstory found in the puzzle sections shows Assassins and Templars participating in every conceivable world-historical event, with famous figures in history such as Richard the Lionheart, Jeanne d'Arc, Leonardo da Vinci, Niccolo Machiavelli, the Borgias, Nikola Tesla, George Washington, Josef Stalin and Adolf Hitler among many others either being Assassins or Templars or non-aligned people supported and opposed by either faction. Indeed, what began as a fairly unusual Wide Open Sandbox variation of stealth and pioneering Le Parkour traversal system became equally celebrated for its Shown Their Work "historical tourism" of famous cities and its monuments allowing players the experience of having Been There, Shaped History.

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This historical fiction is balanced with strong science fiction Magitek elements and the notion of Genetic Memory, whereby a person gains access to the ancestral memories storied in their DNA by reliving them as a VR simulation created by a device called the Animus. The Animus justifies Gameplay and Story Segregation by acting as a HUD, with video game style objectives and devices like a Completion Meter justified as "Synchronization" with a given ancestor's experiences. The events of the Framing Story in each game form the Driving Question of the plot of the historical section, with the Assassins and Templars using the memories to retrieve information about the location of various pieces of Lost Technology left behind by a long extinct, technologically superior Precursor race who defined every religion and mythology.

The saga begins from the perspective of Desmond Miles, a New York bartender who flees from his legacy as an Assassin but gets entangled against his will to explore his Heroic Lineage, which consists of multiple lines of descent from famous Assassins from different corners of the globe. The multiplayer components of the games as well as later entries and the expanded lore show Another Side, Another Story and enlarge the conflict, featuring additional historical figures and the Templar point of view. As noted by its creators at Ubisoft, "history is our playground", and each entry features a great deal of Genre-Busting with its unique open world stealth adventure gameplay adapted to different historical backgrounds.

This page applies for the series as a whole. Please add any examples from an individual game to their dedicated pages.

The series contains examples of:

A-D

Abusive Precursors: Humans were pets, slaves, created not only to serve Those Who Came Before, but also to increase their power. Because enough people believing something can make it come true, it was possible for Those Who Came Before to strive for god-hood. Juno, with her penchant for calculations, and driven by a desire to avenge her beloved, murdered by humans, has become the Big Bad of the series, following the events at the end of III.

Actually Four Mooks: In the first four games, minimap dots may indicate a single soldier or a squad of up to eight soldiers.

Adventure Archaeologist: In addition to being hitmen and occasional revolutionaries, Assassins spend a lot of time exploring and spelunking ancient architecture seeking lots of old artifacts and Lost Technology, often left behind by previous, long dead fellow Assassins. In Revelations, Ezio's main reasons for coming to Constantinople was searching for Altaïr's library, with its keys hidden in various architectural monuments around the city.

In Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag, audio files reveal that the First Civilization projected multiple alternate futures using their quantum prediction device. DLC content like The Tyranny of King Washington contain explorations of these alternate timelines, which are available through the programming of the Pieces of Eden and which contributed to Subject 16's insanity.

Ambiguously Brown: Desmond has three distinct bloodlines of various ancestral origins, so his character model is intended to be ambiguous enough to have come from any of them.

Ancient Conspiracy: Combined with Conspiracy Kitchen Sink, it seems that most politicians or people of any prominence for the last three thousand years were Templars, Assassins, or aligned with/supported by one of the two groups. The Templars have rewritten history to conceal this, with near total success. It is the combined outcome of all of these conspiracies and plots that results in our modern society. Then the Abusive Precursors rear their heads as The Man Behind the Man. The Benevolent Precursors, too, but they're not as good at the math, so they're fighting a losing battle on that front.

Animal Motif: Birds on the whole for the Assassins. They associate it with flight, freedom of movement and speed, which to them typifies their fast Parkour movements across buildings and mastery of terrain. They also like collecting bird feathers in some eras as particular motifs:

Eagles are the most common. Altaïr's cloak has a beak-like hood and slits at the back that resemble tailfeathers, eagles are seen circling View Points, and all of the main story Assassins have a special ability called Eagle Vision. Altaïr, Aveline, Ezio, Haythamnote Raised by his father to be an Assassin though he eventually became a Templar, Arno all have names variously derived from the word for Eagle in Arabic, Greek, French and Old German.

Connor and Edward Kenway, as well as Jacob and Evie Frye don't have bird themed names but the two Kenways are respectively the captain of the Cool Ship — The Aquila, which is Spanish for the Eagle, and the Jackdaw — while the Frye Twins command a street gang called "The Rooks".

There's also Shay Patrick Cormac, the Assassin-turned-Templar of Rogue, whose first name Shay means Hawk and whose last name Cormac means Raven.

Bayek, whose name comes from a hieroglyph for "falcon", and has a pet eagle which assists him. At one point the eagle motif gets a direct nod, when an oracle (or One Who Came Before speaking through her) keeps calling him "eagle".

The Anti-Nihilist: The Assassin Brotherhood, with their maxim of "Nothing is true; everything is permitted". Rather than being a doctrine or command to do what you want — as Edward Kenway willfully misinterprets it — it is more of an observation, that the truth must be divined by one's self, with guidance and forethought of the potential results.

Altaïr Ibn-La'Ahad: ...laws arise not from divinity, but reason. I understand now that our creed does not commend us to be free — it commends us to be wise.

Ezio Auditore da Firenze: ...merely an observation of the nature of reality: To say that nothing is true is to realize that the foundations of society are fragile, and that we must be the shepherds of our own civilization. To say that everything is permitted is to understand that we are the architects of our actions, and that we must live with their consequences, whether glorious or tragic.

Edward James Kenway:It might be that this idea is only the beginning of wisdom, and not its final form.

Arno Victor Dorian:Not a grant of permission, the creed is a warning. Ideals too easily give way to dogma. Dogma becomes fanaticism.

Applied Phlebotinum: The various Pieces of Eden and other First Civilization technology serves this purpose, with different effects for each of them.

Back from the Dead: Some uses of the Shroud of Eden caused this. Additionally, the Ankh was capable of healing the sick, and temporarily resurrecting the dead. It also acted as a recording device, storing the mannerisms of a living person and being able to return those mannerisms to a corpse.

The use of Crystal Skulls, with the user of one such skull being able to communicate instantaneously and telepathically with a user of another skull who is holding one as well from vast distances. As shown in Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag, this works by the recipient's blood being put into the crystal in the skull's forehead, then that person's image being projected via hologram real-time in front of the wielder, complete with voice.

Video Will: The Prophecy Disk and Memory Seals seem to have been a form of this, showing life from centuries past.

Arbitrary Mission Restriction: The series loves the optional objective variant. Since Sequence 2 of Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, every single main-series game and most of the side games have optional objectives for every mission. Some are actual restrictions (like "Don't get into open combat"), while others are merely extra tasks that must be completed during the mission (like "Get five Head Shots on enemies"). Other such conditions include "Assassinate your target with the hidden blade" (as opposed to any other weapon), "Don't touch the water" on missions that take place on or near bodies of water, "Perform three double assassinations," and so on. Completing them results in extra "synchronization" on the mission. Since the Framing Device for the game is that the player is reliving a historical figure's memories, these are loosely justified as being "the way the assassin actually did it". And of course, completing all of the optional objectives is a requirement for 100% Completion.

Altaïr kills nine men for Al Mualim, Ezio assassinates Savonarola's nine lieutenants during the Bonfire of the Vanities and Brotherhood, Revelations and Syndicate have nine sequences. Jacques de Molay entrusts all the Templar knowledge with 9 men in order to rebuild the Order.

72 in Brotherhood, which is divisible by 9.

The average number of main targets to be killed by the Assassins across all the games is also 9.

Of the members of the Order of Ancients in Origins, Bayek personally kills 9 in the main game.

There's an understated but consistent class angle between the Assassins and the Templars. The Templars tend to be plutocrats and a lot of them come from the high classes of societies through the ages, and in modern times titans of industries with the odd scholar here and there; in contrast the Assassins tend to include artisans, intellectuals, artists, scholars, soldiers, thieves, prostitutes, pirates, hackers, and other types of working class heroes and boast a multicultural set-up with the American Assassins during the 1776 Revolution, led by African-Americans and Native Americans.

The major subversion is the Auditore family, who are minor nobility in Florence, though regarded by some as New Money (benefiting from the patronage of Lorenzo de'Medici); their ancestor Domenico Auditore note who started poor and went from Rags to Riches insists however that the primary loyalty of the family is to the people and not to "the deceivers". Ezio prizes himself as a Man of the City and believes that the duty of the privileged is to empower those who are less fortunate.

Aveline de Grandpré is another subversion, a woman born of privilegenote daughter of a French merchant and his African placée in New Orleans, and raised in his mansion even after he formally married a French woman but with a complex understanding of her identity that gives her the skills to move among different classes.

This is averted with Unity where the Templars co-opt democratic sentiment and class angst to radically erase the aristocracy and Church to ensure the triumph of the middle-class while the Assassins favour a moderate approach of Constitutional Monarchy in other words, a royalist position. The Assassins come from a position of privilege while the Templars are disaffected bureaucrats, underworld types and artisans while the Templars rebel against the older aristocratic Templars (with whom the Assassins had a brief truce).

Armor of Invincibility: Starting from Assassin's Creed II, the best armor in the game (as in, unbreakable and with the highest life points, not giving true invincibility) is generally locked behind a gate that requires a number of keys scattered across the gameworld in secret puzzles of some sort.

The iconic white robes and hoods on the Assassin uniform, which have become synonymous with their image and are supposedly necessary for their brand of stealth. The only setting in the series where the uniform actually makes sense is the Third Crusade (from Assassin's Creed I); everybody wore long robes because of the desert heat, and the white color and hoods could be easily mistaken for the Muslim monks and clergymen. But it's laughable how the Assassins manage to go unnoticed in all the other settings. Renaissance Italy (Assassin's Creed II) is particularly egregious; not only do Ezio's large weapons, elaborate capes, and designer armor make him a walking circus attraction, but the bright white/red colors, long robes, and hood are the exact opposite of Renaissance era fashion (people favored big fancy hats, baggy coats and trousers, and dark "royal" colors like blood red, purple, and dark green). It's amazing Ezio, Connor (from Assassin's Creed III, Colonial American era), and Edward (Assassin's Creed IV, Golden Age of Piracy) manage to sneak past anyone in their get-ups. But, let's be honest; could you REALLY imagine the Assassins sneaking around, doing their thing without their uniform at this point? The outfits get more appropiate in Unity and Syndicate, and have been abandoned altogether in the modern times, so they might be one in-universe. It is still evoked by Desmond Miles' sweatshirt, which has a hoodie, and many modern Assassins tend to wear hoodies.

In the original game, the hidden blade was so powerful it's mentioned in the gamebreaker page. It has slowly lost it's importance when new weapons (especially ranged ones) have made their debuts. Between Assassin's Creed III and Rogue it was possibly the most useless weapon in the games, as stealth could be performed by other methods, and the majority of melee weapons are way more powerful. It got a bit more attention in Unity, Syndicate, and Origins but with the cost of being a stealth-only weapon.

Artificial Stupidity: While each game has its own unique quirks, there has been one consistent (and quite bizarre) AI flaw: in a case of an Anti-Frustration FeatureGone Horribly Right, all enemies are programmed to never hear you move past them if their back is turned, even if you're sprinting full-tilt. This was intended to make navigating the Wide Open Sandbox less frustrating by minimizing unwanted enemy encounters, but the rule still carries over into restricted areas and self-contained maps, meaning that with a bit of trial-and-error and memorization of guard patrols, you can dash through areas that would normally require careful tactical stealth.

As Long as There is Evil: Well, the Templars do not think themselves "Evil," but as long as there is human weakness, there will be those who wish to exploit weakness and take power.

Assassination Attempt: Assassin's Creed allows the player to relive dozens of assassinations on historical figures as carried out by members of the fictional Assassin's Brotherhood. Targets range from Crusaders like Robert de Sable to American Revolutionaries like Charles Lee.

Desmond's hooded sweatshirt. Just picture it with the hood up... which it is in III.

Altaïr, Ezio and Desmond all have a virtually identical scar on their lips. Ezio acquires his in the tutorial for the second game.

As You Know: From II through to III, each new game opens with an As You Know narration of the events leading up to it. Particularly egregious at the beginning of Revelations, when Subject 16 is lecturing Desmond about the things he did in the past few games.

Audible Sharpness: The hidden blade has a very iconic "SCHWING!" sound that plays whenever you assassinate someone with it. By contrast, activating it when nobody is around just makes a slight clicking noise.

Aura Vision: "Eagle Vision," a genetic ability shared by all the playable Assassins, allowing them to see people as glowing lights that correspond with the assassin's relation to them. Brotherhood reveals it's a watered-down version of something Those Who Came Before possessed. In Black Flag, James Kidd implies ordinary people can access it with enough effort and training.

Having an Assassin's ring finger removed was not only a dead giveaway, but, with minor alterations to the Hidden Blade, not even necessary.

Separation or emotional distancing between an Assassin and their parents, presumably to avoid familial issues and distractions, also did little in his eyes, arguing that such bonds could be beneficial.

As this video by Skallagrim points out, the Assasin's hoods, while cool-looking, are really detrimental to their field of view. This would make fighting multiple opponents incredibly difficult.

The Assassins have "Nothing is true. Everything is permitted." and "We work in the dark to serve the light. We are Assassins."

Templars have "May the Father of Understanding guide us."

Badass Family: Desmond's ancestors. By the time Desmond is born, the only remnant he has of his mighty ancestry is a penchant for white hoodies (this doesn't last, however), but Desmond's long varied lineage contains several badass families across generations, and Assassin's Creed IV has an internal Abstergo Entertainment e-mail that details just how far-flung his lineage is: through his father he's descended from both the Auditores and the Kenways, while through his mother he's descended from Altaïr and Maria Thorpe as well as seemingly Japanese, French, and Taiwanese bloodlines.

Altaïr was the son of an Assassin couple and married a Templar, Maria Thorpe, who was a good fighter herself and fathered two badass Assassin sons, one of whomnote Darim, though Desmond was descended from the other son, Sef landed the killing blow on Genghis Khan himself.

In the second game, Ezio Auditore discovers that his father Giovanni and Uncle Mario were Assassins, a throwaway line in Assassin's Creed: Brotherhod implies that his brother Federico was one, too. His own sister Claudia becomes one in the same game, while Ezio himself is considered the greatest Mentor of the Order after Altaïr.

While Altaïr's family and the Auditores were cohesive and loving, the Kenways are a Big, Screwed-Up Family to say the least. Still, they are pretty badass with three generations of Player Character. Grandfather Edward is a feared pirate captain, his son Haytham is the Black Sheep, a Templar Grand Master, and the grandson Connor is a Native American Assassin who plays a major role in The American Revolution.

Badass Long Robe: Most Assassins in Altaïr's and Ezio's eras wear this sort of attire.

Been There, Shaped History: All the freaking time. Listing every occasion where Assassins and/or Templars were somehow involved in major historical events would probably fill up an entire page.

Beethoven Was an Alien Spy: All over the place. "Good" historical figures were Assassins (or at least aided them). The one solid exception is Jack the Ripper who was an Assassin who went nuts until he was stopped by Evie Frye. "Bad" ones are Templars (though the writers will shake this formula up if they want to do really elaborate conspiracies). Then there are Sages, Wandering Jew-type characters (really reincarnations of One Who Came Before who was trapped in a proto-Animus) amongst whom you can include pirate Black Bart, mysterious occultist the Count of Saint Germaine, and possibly David Bowie.

Every structure that you need to climb has grab points conveniently located on it. Every rooftop path is loaded with platforms, protruding beams, and flagpoles. Every tall building has a haystack beneath it to perform a Leap of Faith into. The architecture is designed so precisely that it can only be traversed by someone with the free-running skills that the Assassins possess (never mind that a tall ladder would make most of the puzzle segments trivial). As with many other gameplay elements, this is implied to be an embellishment provided by the Animus to make "playing" the memories easier for the subject.

Assassin's Creed III introduces Benevolent Nature, with trees conveniently felled, stumped, bifurcated and sturdy enough for Connor to free-run on. Rocks on hills and cliffs can also be scaled without the climbing equipment, ropes and ladders needed to do so in real-life, thanks to Connor's firm grip and the presence of conveniently placed tiny grabbing points, fissures and inclines to scale.

Benevolent Precursors: Most of Those Who Came Before didn't wish humans ill; they merely saw them as lesser. In their desperate attempts to save themselves from a coming cosmic disaster, they were also trying to save humanity, and not merely incidentally. The Eagle Vision of all the playable characters is a result of human-TWCB interbreeding. Jupiter and Minerva, though not as skilled as Juno at the calculations necessary for predicting possible futures, were nevertheless working to try and save the world before they perished. They tried dozens of costly solutions. All failed.

Brain Uploading: Juno's plan gets her broadcasted into The Grey, her name for humanity's information network, and her ultimate goal is to "save" mankind by doing this to all of them. A line in Unity suggests it might also have happened to Clay and Desmond.

The franchise has a central theme of the creed itself, using it as a filter to understand history and the lives of characters with different contexts and life experience defining and redefining its meaning and purpose.

Another central theme is the struggle of human history, with progress coming at a price, compromise, betrayal and failure a common outcome to even the most promising revolutions, and the extent Humans Are Flawed that they need control and the questionable wisdom of leaders to shape their lives rather than follow their own free will.

Loss as a theme runs heavily throughout the franchise. Loss of concrete things like loved ones, lives of children and friends, entire families or tribes, as well as more abstract things like innocence, naiveté, ideals, belief in one's elders as paragons of virtue, etc.

Another is how all the same conflicts never seem to stop repeating themselves no matter how many thousands of years humanity continues to survive on the earth. Both the Assassins and Templars envision themselves breaking this cycle; their main point of contention with each other is the means by which they seek to achieve this. The Templars plan to do so by imposing order and control in spite of free will; the Assassins believe that by preserving and upholding humanity's freedom to choose, they would eventually be enlightened and seek the greater good through cooperation.

III and Unity had an underlying moral about the importance of compromise and cooperation. Over the course of the two games, the Templars and the Assassins form a shaky truce that collapses because of old grudges on both sides. Minerva notes that the the two orders could have saved the world if they didn't spend centuries fighting each other.

Closing Credits: All games have long closing credits after the last cutscene. They are unskippable in case one wants to play again.

Code of Honor: The titular Assassin's Creed is a sort of anti-Code that still manages to be a Code: "The wisdom of our creed is revealed in these words: 'Nothing is true. Everything is permitted.'" Naturally, there isn't much debate over what fits with a Code like that, only how it should be applied. There was originally a whole slew of other rules (no poison, a number of ritual requirements like removing a finger to earn hidden blade privileges, absolute loyalty to superiors, etc.) but these were mostly abandoned over the centuries and each protagonist follows the warrior code appropriate to their culture.

In every game, each faction wears clearly distinctive colors so you can tell them apart at a glance. This applies to their minimap icons as well, when it's relevant.

Eagle Vision paints allies, enemies and targets accordingly to make it easier to tell NPC's apart from a distance.

Combat Pragmatist: All Assassins are masters at dirty fighting. When they say, "Everything is permitted," they mean everything is permitted. Initially subverted with the use of poison being looked down on by Altaïr in the first game, though he takes care of that in the codex pages of the second game.

Completion Meter: A staple in the series for "additional memories", such as collectible flags in the first installment, and eagle feathers in the second game.

This is enforced even moreso in Assassin's Creed III and Assassins Creed IV where Connor's personality, a mixture of stoic resolve, vulnerability and Naïve Newcomer earnestness contrasts with that of Decoy Protagonist Haytham Kenway, who is worldly wise, jaded and walks with Bondlike swagger. Both of them are supremely different from the loutish Edward Kenway who is a foul-mouthed, amoral pirate.

Cool Ship: Assassins are rather fond of this. The Aquila, Connor's flagship, is a custom-made brig built, his grandfather Edward was a pirate who piloted a repurposed Spanish brig which he built into a One Ship Armada while the modern day Assassins travel on a surveillance ship called Altaïr II, captained by Susan Drayton. Edward's first-mate Adéwalé would go on to captain his own ship after losing the Jackdaw, namely the Experto Crede, which would eventually be sunk by Shay Cormac's own brig, the Morrigan.

Cosmic Horror Reveal: This is a perfectly normal game about an evil organisation forcing the PC to relive the genetic memories of his ancestors, tied in to an ancient-evil-conspiracy plot. Suddenly, Abusive Precursors arrive and the world's about to be destroyed by some sort of horrible thing. Then that's dealt with and we're instead fighting an evil undead god.

Counter Attack: One of the highlights of the combat system is the elaborate and visually spectacular counters, to the point of having a different set of animations for each weapon type. In fact, counters are the only effective way to fight multiple opponents in Open Combat up until Brotherhood introduces kill streaks and combo kills, making it practical to go on the offensive for the first time in the series.

Cowardly Mooks: In certain games, the more low-ranked city guards will often retreat if the player character is good enough at showing off their badassery against them. Even some higher-ranked soldiers aren't immune to this, although again, it depends on the game.

Cutscene Power to the Max: Averted, at least in terms of the pre-rendered CGI trailers. Despite not being gameplay footage, almost every action they show can actually be performed in the game itself.

Altaïr is a career assassin and as such opposes the Templars on matters of principle rather than some personal vendetta. That said, Robert De Sable humiliating him for his brashness and leaving him alive started a grudge that drove Altaïr to find him in Arsuf. Even more, Al Mualim's sagely conversations with Altaïr and his giving him a second chance by wiping out nine Templars end up making Altaïr The Hero strong enough to stand up and defeat his newly revealed Evil All Along Mentor and make him into a successor who makes the Assassins into a stronger force. Smooth move.

Ezio Auditore was a playboy without a care in the world, until the Borgia decide to kill his father and brothers, with their mooks making rapey jokes about his mother and sister. After an apprenticeship with his Uncle Mario and several Stealth Mentors, he starts a lifelong career in littering Mediterranean Europe with Templar corpses, shutting them down, and in the process, initiating a Golden Age in Europe.

Edward, The Patriarch of the Kenway family, was a Lower-Class Lout who was a mere sailor aboard a ship who the Templars dismissed as a mere thug not worth their time and sent him away as a prisoner on their Treasure fleet. However, it's on that fleet that Edward meets his first mate Adewale, forms his first crew and repurposes their getaway brig into his flagship, the Jackdaw with him promoted to The Captain. He decides that the Observatory the Templars were talking about might be worth his time after all, and while the Assassins aren't entirely his cup of tea, he likes the fact that they are more forgiving and better company. If only the Templars weren't skinflints and had paid him properly.

Desmond Miles hated his Assassin upbringing and his father's stern disciplinary approach and ran away from home and lived as a drifter and bartender without a care in the world. Rather than extend a hand to a confused young man, the Templars kidnap him, with a Dr. Jerk assuring Desmond that he'll be killed once they have what they want with the result that Desmond realized that his father had a point about the Templars after all and made him a Prodigal Hero for the assassins once they rescue him; even before the reveal of his father, Desmond flat-out declared that "after what those Templar bastards put me through", he wants in on the Assassins. Lucy Stillman's assistance in particular played a more significant part in setting Desmond on the path back to his ancestors' cause, despite her turning out to be a Templar double agent. Interestingly, Juno's intervention made sure that she would not stand in his way, and her true allegiance is only revealed posthumously.

Shay Cormac is a Templar version: Once a semi-loyal Assassin, after their search for Precursor artifacts led them to cause multiple earth-shattering earthquakes and the Brotherhood refused to listen to his warnings, he was forced to betray them in order to prevent them from having further cataclysmic screw-ups. After their failed attempt to kill him, he was rescued and swayed by benevolent if somewhat manipulative Templar. He would go on to render the Colonial Brotherhood to a single broken old man destined to rot away in his estate until the arrival of Connor. Incidentally, he also unknowingly started another version of this trope by killing Charles Dorian, Arno's father, although it would take several years and the death of another father figure before he could become a full-fledged Assassin.

The Animus shown in the 2016 film actually allows the subject to assimilate his ancestor's skills directly into his muscle memory with a rig in which the subject can physically simulate his ancestor's movements. An Abstergo security official even lampshades it: "We are feeding the beast." Sure enough, the imprisoned subjects initiate a prison break, allowing three of them to escape and set out to thwart the Templars' plans.

Origins shows the entire Brotherhood was one of these. Bayek and Aya were originally just a loving couple from the Siwan Oasis, until the Order of Ancients came looking for a Precursor vault, with one particularly Ax-Crazy member of theirs taking the lead, resulting in the death of Bayek and Aya's son. During their Roaring Rampage of Revenge, the two make several allies, and when the Order manage to get Cleopatra and Caesar on their side, Bayek decides to form his own order.

Cycle of Revenge: Some version of the Assassins and the Templars have been fighting since the First Disaster in repeated conflicts over Pieces of Eden, and Desmond and William both think in Assassin's Creed III that the conflict will continue long after they die.

Dashed Plot Line: Most of the game takes place in "memory sequences", which are segments of memory in which significant events happened in the life of the main character. Individual sequences may take place over significant lengths of time and there are often lengthy jumps between sequences.

Deconstructor Fleet: The Assassin's Creed series as a whole is filled with several conceits that poke holes into traditional genre elements.

Unlike most conspiracy-based fiction, which posits a hitherto unknown secret as the real explanation, the game takes a Like Reality Unless Noted approach that aligns 80% of the time with the actual historical record, with the facts altered for gameplay reasons. Indeed, the battle between the Assassins and the Templars as seen in the game largely shows how difficult or impossible "behind-the-scenes" control over history would actually be, with the Assassins and the Templars wavering in the level of control and influence they have on world affairs and never in a position to truly change things as they would like it.

By and large, the game tackles pop-culture perceptions of a given period, showing a more accurate vision of historical figures than most popular fiction. The first game for example shows Richard the Lionheart as a Noble Demon rather than the Big Good for England, a warrior for God who invades the Holy Land and regards his enemies as heathens but pragmatic enough to listen to the nominally Muslim Assassin, Altaïr.

The second game and its sequel likewise shows The Renaissance not only as an intellectual and artistic revolution but a time of great political turmoil and uncertainty, with city-states relying on mercenaries and backdoor assassinations to assert their hold over a region, with a special focus on the corruption of the Church. Niccolò Machiavelli likewise is shown as a Reasonable Authority Figure devoted to public welfare and service rather than the stereotype people hold over him. The game director Patrice Desilets was especially proud to show Leonardo da Vinci not by the popular image of a bearded old man, but the young handsome man that he was famous for being at the peak of his creativity.

Assassin's Creed III and Liberation likewise gives a Warts and All depiction of The American Revolution, showing what happened to people who didn't profit from the movement. Likewise, the fourth game shows The Golden Age of Piracy as no Golden Age but a fruitless struggle for sailors and men of ambition oppressed by their country's navy to make a living that a restrictive society would not allow them, showing a fuller depiction of the reality of pirate life than adventure movies generally allow.

The third game in particular, both the present and modern story, deconstructs the Assassins vs. Templars conflict. The historical portion shows the Assassins and Templars briefly united by a common purpose as well as familial bonds while at the end of the contemporary storyline, Minerva tells the contemporary Assassins that they wasted the whole of history fighting the Templars instead of working to the common good.

The conceit of the game itself deconstructs Video Game Tropes itself: the Animus is specifically modified on the metaphor of gameplay with progression, items, quests geared to achieving "synchronization," an aspect defined as "organic design" by Patrice Desilets, the game director on the first two games. The fourth game, likewise, is set in a modern day game company that essentially seeks to do in the gameworld what Ubisoft is doing with the series: use ancestor memories to create pop-culture products.

Depending on the Writer: Much of the Lore across the AC-Franchise in both the modern-day, the historical era, both within the games and the Expanded Universe changes from writer-to-writer, leading to multiple Retcon and changes across the series:

Assassin's Creed I implied that it was taking place in an Alternate Universe substantially different from later series, with whole parts of Africa being depopulated and so on. The games following on from that significantly downplayed this, attempting to go in a more Like Reality Unless Noted aspect. A good example is that, the first AC game had its main plot being stopping a Templar Satellite from going into outer space by which they would use a Piece of Eden, the Modern Day plot between Assassin's Creed II and III evolved to stopping a solar flare first predicted by the Mayan Calendar prophecy so as to mirror the contemporary craze over 2012 being the supposed end of the world.

The First Civilization were technologically advanced and quite powerful and capable but III had Juno insist that their technology had limits such as transferring consciousness digitally to a synthetic form, which was eventually retconned in Syndicate where Consus was revealed to have achieved that albeit kept the technology from Juno and Aita. The First Civilization were also incapable of halting the Toba Catastrophe while their many earthquake machines in Rogue suggest that they do have technology that can control the tectonic plates and landmass. Likewise in III, Juno insists that she failed to save Aita, but in Black Flag it's revealed that as a backup plan she managed to scatter him into an endlessly reincarnating being.

The Lore in the "The Truth" puzzles of Assassin's Creed II originally implied that Winston Churchill, George Washington, and other famous figures were Templars or Templar-puppets, then III and Syndicate changed and altered the allegiances of both characters for their on-screen appearances, and likewise Black Flag introduce a handwave that stated that Subject 16 couldn't differentiate the truth and false visions and probabilities from his visions, more or less making "the Lore" guidelines rather than rules.

The Templars are stated to be groups and individuals with worthy goals and ideals that got twisted and the conflict between the two, as presented in I was Grey and Gray Morality. However, the Ezio games made the Templars into cackling villains which III and Black Flag tried to balance and restore, and which Rogue and Unity tilted to the other way once again. This also gets contradicted internally, since Initiates (which was stated to be the canonical ending of Freedom Cry) said that Robespierre was an ally who aided the Haitian Assassins by abolishing slavery in the Caribbean, and that Napoleon was their enemy. But Unity the game presents a villainous (and Templar) Robespierre and a heroic (and Assassin ally) Napoleon instead.

Distracted by the Sexy: This is actually a game mechanic in the series: hiring a group of courtesans/Romanies to either act as a mobile hiding spot or distract a targeted group of guards is an effective way of completing most of the stealth sequences.

Doomed by Canon: For all the success you have as an Assassin in the past, you know that eventually the Assassins will be driven underground and the Knights Templar will become an insanely powerful, globe-spanning corporation, Abstergo.

Dying Truce: Basically all storyline kills end like this, with the character giving the Assassin important plotline information (or occasionally trying to plant seeds of doubt) in his dying breath as he lays in the Assassin's arms.

E-H

Early Installment Weirdness: The "historical tourism" aspect of the series, enabled by the Database Entries and constant attention drawn to famous landmarks via Assassin's Tombs is not played out strongly in Assassin's Creed I, with the only significant historical figure present being Richard the Lionheart and the Crusades being relegated to the background. It was with Assassin's Creed II, with almost the entire supporting cast comprised of actual historical figures, generally accurate time frame and recreations of historical events like the Pazzi Conspiracy and the Bonfire of the Vanities became as much a part of the core appeal of the series as the social stealth gameplay of the original.

Edutainment Game: Although obviously the storyline and characters are Historical Fiction, the games do provide real information about historical figures, settlements and societies. To cite one specific example, a significant amount of assassination targets across all the games really did die in the exact year and the exact place in which they are encountered in the game; only their causes of death are changed.

In an optional conversation between William and Desmond Miles in Assassin's Creed III, they note that there have been several instances in the past where the Assassins and the Templars have banded together against a common threat, but these alliances were often temporary and short-term, since the Assassins and the Templars were too untrustworthy of each other to fully function and are more effective, as William notes ironically, as enemies than as friends.

"Throughout our history, there have been moments, several, in fact. But it's impossible. There are existential differences. Insurmountable. If there were to be unity, it wouldn't be a truce so much as a submission."

In the same game, Haytham and Connor briefly make common cause against Benjamin Church, the experience and his reunion with his father makes Connor and Achilles discuss a potential alliance between Templars and Assassins on common goals. Like William pointed out, it petered out because Poor Communication Kills and Failure Is the Only Option.

In Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag, particularly the Freedom Cry DLC, Adéwalé takes a brief hiatus from fulfilling his Assassin duties to join forces with Templar Bastienne Josephe, the latter of whom was more intent on abolishing slavery in Hispaniola than actually serving the Order. Initiates reveals they had one romantic encounter, and their grandson Eseosa would eventually ally himself with Connor.

In Assassin's Creed: Unity Arno Dorian and Elise worked together during the Revolution to track down Grand Master de Serre's killers. Elise even tried to approach Mirabeau for an alliance, which drove Pierre Bellec to kill him and attempt to burn the Brotherhood down for cooperating with the enemy.

It's worth noting that under François de la Serre's tenure as Grand Master there actually was something of a truce, or at least a détente, between the Templars and the Assassins under Mirabeau, and the two men were great friends and confidantes. Granted, this truce was not to most people's liking as evidenced by both men getting killed by their own sides.

Memories mentions that the Assassins and Templars teamed up to combat the Mongol Empire, but split as the Templars focused on bolstering their allies while the Assassins focused on guerrilla tactics and direct assassination.

Equipment-Based Progression: The games generally follow this format, in that you get better weapons to do more damage, and better armor to get more health (the first has a "sync" bar that increases through the game as you did various sidequests).

Evil Counterpart: The Templars to the Assassin's as a whole, See 'The Fettered' and 'Order Versus Chaos' below. Indeed the running theme of the game is to how the Assassins and the Templars react to emerging historical changes and events, with the series largely tracing it like a back-and-forth political debate. Some of the Assassin heroes, Connor especially, nurtures hopes for an Enemy Mine and to reconcile the two views. This comes closest in the series with Unity, with an almost literal marriage between the orders in Paris. Unfortunately, there's the problem of, as we discover in Black Flag, Sages.

Fascist, but Inefficient: Whenever the Templars take full control of an area, they tend to run it into the ground due to their "keep the people weak" policy weakening entire nations. So much for their Utopia. And they never, ever learn from those mistakes. Or when they do learn, they commit new mistakes.

The Assassins strive for Freedom/Chaos, yet live by a strict moral code that defines all their actions. The Templars, in contrast, seek Order/Law, yet have absolutely no moral restrictions on their behavior and are free to use any and all means (up to and including mass murder) in pursuit of their goal. This leads to quite a few ironies, see Murder Is the Best Solution below. Ultimately, both the Assassins and Templars believe that "Nothing is true, everything is permitted". But to the Assassins the phrase is descriptive whereas to the Templars it's proscriptive (to understand this sentence better, note how Altaïr differentiates between the two as he progresses through Al-Mualim's missions in the first game).

Notably, Edward Kenway's willful misinterpretation of it in the face of James Kidd's straightforward explanation is part of why Edward stands out compared to the prior playable ancestors: for most of his game, he subscribes closer to the Templar interpretation despite not being on their side.

Shay Cormac's firsthand experience with the Creed is distorted by a tragic encounter with an Artifact of Eden, a mission sanctioned by his Assassin Mentor Achilles. He turns his back on the Brotherhood, declaring that "If everything is permitted... then no one is safe." His eventual allegiance with the Colonial Templars is rooted mainly out of spite for what the Brotherhood made him do, and not quite fully what the Order stood for.

Fling a Light into the Future: The grand design of The Ones Who Came Before, who found themselves dying from underpopulation after a great catastrophe, was to seed the Earth with their artifacts and use their knowledge of the future to manipulate events so that key people would have the necessary information to prevent the same catastrophe from happening again. Altaïr's story in Revelations is an explicitly demonstrated subplot of this larger design.

Altaïr: They are... messages, of a sort. Niccolo Polo: Messages? For whom? Altaïr: I wish I knew.

Foregone Conclusion: Both the Assassins and the Templars make it to the 21st century intact, and every ancestor character survives to have at least one child.

Forever War: If the span of the playable games hasn't convinced you yet, then the backstory will: Assassins and Templars have been fighting each other ever since Cain and Abel, and have continued all the way into the "present". Surprisingly, both sides manage to keep a bearing on what they want, especially after their orders determined their purposes during the 3rd Crusade in 1190. While both sides have become obsessed with defeating the other, they both have specific reasons why they want this (ensure freedom for the Assassins, protect order for the Templars), and their worldviews are too different to allow peace between both sides. There were brief periods of weakness or truce through history, but the 2 orders have never had peace globally ever!

Gameplay and Story Segregation: Justified and explained thanks to the above Framing Device. The Animus allows subjects to explore a virtual reality simulation based on their ancestor's memories, but it is not a perfect recreation. This is how the player is able to get away with doing some things the ancestor might not have done, why there is Video Game Time, why there is Benevolent Architecture everywhere, etc. (Amusingly, even the subtitles are covered by this trope, with Desmond pointing this out in one instance in II.) Basically, any time there's a bout of Fridge Logic at play, you can Hand Wave it as "it's not a perfect recreation, but it's close enough to maintain synchronization so just go with it." The Animus is also explicitly modeled after a video game console, and in later games a variant of it is marketed as such to the public, further justifying things like the HUD, mission objectives, and control scheme being as they are.

Gotta Kill Em All: The series basically embodies this trope, from the main plot of all the games revolving around assassinating a group of villains, to the optional sidequest of killing the 60 Templar Knights in the 1st game.

Assassin's Creed I was fairly grey in that quite a few of the targets were sympathetic, the Player Character Altaïr was highly flawed himself. Then there's the fact that the Final Boss was ultimately, Al Mualim, the leader of the Assassins who had used him as a pawn to wipe away the other Templars so he can control the Apple for himself.

Every story in the Animus is this, showing both the real forces which drove history with no one ever knowing their name and the lives of their allies and public figures distorted to elide it. The Assassin's choose this by design of course. Desmond Miles in 2012, performed a Heroic Sacrifice to save the lives of every life on earth. Not only is the public unaware of Desmond but they will never know how close they were to extinction.

An even more pertinent and emotional example is Clay Kaczmarek, Subject 16. No one had more Undying Loyalty to the Creed than Clay and yet even after his death, the Assassins, except Desmond (after having gotten a glimpse of his memories), seem to have forgotten him, treating him as a Cloud Cuckoo Lander with Desmond tersely reminding Rebecca that He Had a Name when she called him "subject 16".

The Guards Must Be Crazy: The often incredible stupidity of the guards is justified In-Universe by the Animus not rendering memories precisely as they occurred, but rather as a VR simulation that Desmond must attempt to "play" as close to the way it really happened as possible. The assumption is that the real Assassins were much better at being inconspicuous than the player appears to be. There are also a few aversions in the second game onward, when the guards will act with surprising alertness and care, in particular by searching likely hiding spots.

Hacker Collective: Erudito is opposed to Abstergo, and hack into the Animus files in Liberation to expose the falsehoods about Aveline and several of the multiplayer characters in III (including suggesting that one, Alsoomse/The Independent, never actually existed). They also send information to both players of Project Legacy and Desmond in Brotherhood by giving him passwords to the other Assassins' email accounts so that he can monitor their exchanges on his own terms. In the Black Flag multiplayer, it's revealed that several of their members participated in a cybercrime that deleted $10 million in life savings, devolving into petty larceny, and several of them ended up being arrested.

Half-Human Hybrid: The "Truth" segments and the backstory exposition across the various games reveal that Altaïr and Ezio's bloodlines are descended from "Adam and Eve", who were real people that were part of an experiment in cross-breeding humans with the Precursors. They proved to be immune to the Mind Control effects of the Pieces of Eden and stole the original Apple, giving rise to the myth of Eden. They led a revolt against their masters and eventually gave rise to the Assassin order... and the Templars, through their son Cain.

Hero of Another Story: The series has a running theme dealing with the fact that history and life itself is filled with Loads and Loads of Characters with everyone, big and small, major and minor, having a part to play and a story to tell. Especially the post Ezio story arc games which moves away from the Protagonist Driven Arc of the Ezio games.

Assassin's Creed: Revelations, the Fully Absorbed Finale to the Ezio-Altaïr Era lampshades two great heroes from two different eras, showing Desmond's own struggle in light of theirs and also highlighting Clay Kaczmarek/Subject 16's own parallel narrative and struggle, which is no less heroic than Desmond's:

"What is a man but the sum of his memories? We are the stories we live! The tales we tell ourselves!"

Despite a profession that requires stealth and anonymity, the Assassins wear an extremely recognizable uniform. It is more excusable in the first game when the white robe and hood lets them pass for Muslim scholars (which is even lampshaded when Sibrand is introduced).

It stands out even in a pre-modern period like the Renaissance, where the nobility wear robes and doublets, but aside from Monks, nobody wears hoods. Ezio's outfit in Brotherhood, its distinctive robes with the signature "beak" stands out starkly against other Renaissance Italian clothing, all the moreso since he prominently displays the symbol of the Assassin order on his armor and like Connor, wears the symbol in metal atop red sash belts. The Assassin insignia belt buckle is almost as large as his head. No one ever suspects the guy wearing this outfit and bristling with weapons as the likely culprit of a mass murder, even when he is standing right there watching them in a crowd, where nobody wears clothing remotely resembling Ezio's.

In the 18th Century, the Assassin outfits display changing fashion trends and looks more like Badass Longcoats. Connor in particular, barring his hood could pass as a wilderness lumberjack or frontiersman. His white longcoat also blends in well in the winter landscape. The Assassins however retain the prominent hoods, and their fondness for the same is actually lampshaded in Black Flag: when the Assassin defector Duncan was originally supposed to meet the Templars on the understanding that he'd wear the distinctive robes worn by his Order. Aveline de Grandpré is the most practically outfitted of the Assassins in this time period, sporting a black tricorne hat instead of a hood and who deliberately changes her outfits in her role as an Assassin, incorporating different gameplay elements by shifting from Assassin to Slave to Proper Lady.

In Unity, the French Assassins have mostly abandoned the Hood and White Robes except for ceremonial reasons. Arno is unique among the French Assassins for wearing a hood, since his mentor, Pierre Bellec, despite being an active field agent doesn't wear one either. He, like Aveline, is rare for having non-white default robes. He wears a blue suit, white vest and red cravat which aside from being the colours of the French Flag also pass convincingly as period appropriate clothes, with the hood being the most conspicuous element, Lampshaded by Napoleon himself.

"Syndicate" downplays this enough that aside from Henry Green, the traditional Assassin uniform has mostly died down as a fashion choice. Jacob and Evie Frye both wear darker robes, and usually accessorize in order to hide the look. The trade-off unfortunately is that even like this, their many belts and the like stand out like a sore thumb from more smooth Victorian fashion. Furthermore, Evie's outfit still has a hood which does make her seem a bit odd in Victorian Britain, and Jacob's top hat doesn't exactly help him blend in at all either.

Bayek's default outfit in "Origins" is more or less normal for the period (Cleopatra-era Egypt). Optional outfits range from Ezio, Altair, and Aguilar's outfits (i.e. completely inappropriate for the time period and not even invented for another 10 centuries) to normal Egyptian wear, with almost everything in between. Completing an optional chain quest even gives Bayek a science fiction-inspired outfit that wouldn't look out of place in Star Wars.

Modern Assassins tend to wear either white hoodies or other types of regular clothing.

High-Speed Hijack: Starting with Brotherhood the games allow horse-jacking, either when you're leaping from above or from a horse of your own. Cart-jacking is done too, in a few sequences. There is an even an Achievement for it, Grand Theft Dressage.

For starters, the Hashashashin themselves, who the first game accurately labeled as the Asasiyun (their true etymology). According to history, they were Hassan-I-Sabah's private army. They built a reputation at the time as his enemies were Asshole Victims whom they eliminated with a minimum of collateral damage. The first game also shows a respectful and realistic representation of King Richard I as a Blood Knight and Noble Demon, who occassionally can allow respect for the Worthy Opponent from a "heathen" faith.

Lorenzo de' Medici is portrayed as an idealized Big Good of the Florentine Renaissance, A Lighter Shade of Gray compared to the more ruthless Pazzi and Borgia family. As seen in the Bonfire of the Vanities DLC, his passing leaves weak descendants and Girolamo Savonarola to rise to power. Historically, the Medici held hegemony by the same combination of proto-mafia shakedowns and backroom power politics as the rest of the Italian families. His ruthless edge is acknowledged when he promises to destroy the Pazzi after they killed his brother, an action which Lucrezia Borgia tells Ezio extended to the innocent as well as the guilty. Likewise Caterina Sforza is shown as a ruthless and cold Proper Lady who, unlike Ezio, doesn't confuse business with pleasure but is also quite friendly and caring when least expected, perfectly described by Ezio as "A Rose of Tempered Steel".

The portrayal of Niccolo Machiavelli however is closer to his actual biography than to the Hollywood History version that most people know. In reality, he was an ardent supporter of republicanism, and many historians believe that his most famous work, The Prince, was a satire. Notably, Word of God is that the in-universe titular prince was not Cesare Borgia, but rather Ezio Auditore. Leonardo da Vinci gets an upgrade in heroism, despite only playing a supportive role to Ezio. Notable changes include that his inventions work, are completely functional and can be used at nearly any time. Plus he's the main character's best buddy. The game also accurately shows him in his youthful fame as a very handsome man, and also makes it clear that he is gay.

Assassin's Creed III averts this. It makes the personal failings and hypocrisies of the Founding Fathers a central part of its plot. With the likes of George Washington ordering the displacement of natives from the lands, citing the fact that many of them align with the British. They are also slaveowners who argue for liberty. The Native American hero Connor is constantly strained to justify his support for the Patriot Cause and the fact that the Assassin-Templar conflict as such will have no effect on the wider reality. Rogue set in the Seven Years' War is another aversion since the Assassins support the French faction and the brief decline of the Assassin Brotherhood is tied to them putting their full weight on behalf of the losing side, who as Shay points out, are also their opponents in Haiti.

Black Flag looks at The Golden Age of Piracy with a pro-pirate perspective, showing them as poor sailors trying to resist Empires that compete to maintain the safety of the Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea largely so that they can maintain routes for slave trade. Likewise, the game shows us a Blackbeard who rarely killed and is A Father to His Men, a romantic depiction but one closer to historical record than earlier portrayals.

Unity subjects the Constitutional Monarchy of 1789 to a great deal of idealization, with Mirabeau shown as a Pragmatic Hero whose corruption and backroom dealing with the King is depicted as an attempt to control escalating tension. Mirabeau was intelligent and sincere, but he was also vain and personally ambitious and significantly misunderstood his influence with the Court. The Assassins mostly side with the moderate liberals, persecuted nobility and independent revolutionaries like Theroigne de Mericourt while the Templars co-opt the popular movement.

The Knights Templar in general were not a shadowy organization of psychotics and dictators bent on world domination. Indeed, even the depiction of The Purge of Jacques de Molay at the hands of King Philip IV le Bel in the prologue of Unity accords them very little sympathy.

The Borgia are the poster child for Big, Screwed-Up Family of the Renaissance and their portrayal in the Ezio games does not disappoint. While Rodrigo Borgia was certainly a murderous, conniving asshole, the game's research neglects his exceptional religious tolerance in favor of an entertaining Evil Overlord who regards Christianity as bunk and sees the papacy as an entirely political office.History Where the game falters is his real-life Pet the Dog moment, his tolerance to Jews suffering from antijudaism who in turn lived in the famous Jewish quarter in Rome. His successor Julius was a vicious anti-judaic and spread rumors about him, including accusing Rodrigo of being Jewish himself (which might be true and if so, lend him a considerable Freudian Excuse). Neither fact is acknowledged in the game. Likewise, Savonarola in the Bonfire of the Vanities DLC, although AC was hardly the first to come up with this portrayal, though the game acknowledges him as a Wild Card who is not connected to Assassins or Templars. History The reason Savonarola was able to carry out his famous Bonfire was because the people of Florence were sick and tired of watching wealthy Italian families flaunt their vast fortunes by commissioning ludicrously expensive sculptures and paintings while the rest of society was beset by plague and poverty. By the standards of the time he was closer to a popular revolutionary. Hell, in the 1990s he was even nominated as a candidate for sainthood (he didn't win though, obviously).

The Templars in Black Flag, III and the Villain Episode of Rogue largely avert this being more complex in motivation than the Borgia. That said, Charles Lee is a mostly In Name Only depiction that bears little visual resemblance to the real man, acts like a mustache-twirling villain for the most part and serves as a Satellite Character to the fictional Haytham Kenway.

George Washington danced with the trope a little bit. The Truth message in II painted him as a Templar. III disproved this with George being a major obstacle to the Templar plans and giving him a pretty fair portrayal, but one notable instance is that remains is George ordered the attack on Connor's village at a time when the real man had been retired from the military.

Unity subjects the entire French Revolution to this, showing the popular movement to be secretly stage-managed by the Templars who want to usher the rise of the Middle Class by destroying the nobility, while also showing the world that The Revolution Will Not Be Civilized via the Reign of Terror, so that people will fear revolutions in the future.

In the backstory, we have Thomas Edison, a proven Jerkass who regularly stole ideas and performed grotesque "demonstrations" to smear his assistant-turned-rival Nikola Tesla. Turns out he was also a Templar who stole his rival's MacGuffin and gave it to Henry Ford, who in turn, gave it to Adolf Hitler for the express purpose of jumpstarting the Holocaust and World War II. Also, Hitler's conspirators? Winston Churchill, FDR and Josef Stalin. Making matters worse, at some point the Templar Order decided to use a Piece of Eden to cause insanity in Nikola Tesla thus removing him as a threat to both Thomas Edison as well as the general Templar order; though not before Tesla successfully destroyed a Piece of Eden in The Tunguska Event.

Averted. You can kill all the guards in a specific encounter and others in different areas won't notice.

In a larger, more metaphorical sense, this is why the Templars keep thriving no matter how many of them are killed by the Assassins - You Cannot Kill An Idea.

The Assassins train for years so they can battle society's flaws, but even when they succeed in changing society for the better, society is rarely grateful, as the Templars are always there to offer simpler - albeit amoral - alternatives to the Assassins Creed of wisdom and freedom. However, the Creed itself uplifts those who follow it to great heights if they are willing to work hard for it - Nothing is True(Think for Yourself), Everything is Permitted(Freedom is Life) - making it impossible to destroy.

Altaïr Ibn-La'Ahad...how does one wage war against a concept? It is the perfect weapon. It lacks a physical form yet can alter the world around us in numerous, often violent ways. You cannot kill a creed. Even if you kill all of its adherents, destroy all of its writings  these are a reprieve at best. Some one, some day, will rediscover it. Reinvent it. I believe that even we, the Assassins, have simply re-discovered an Order that predates the Old Man himself...Connor Kenway: Were we not meant to live in peace, then? Is that it? Are we born to argue? To fight? So many voices - each demanding something else.

The Templars use society's flaws to dominate it, which they find simple and profitable. And they will always exist because Humans Are Flawed; As Long As There Are people who prefer to obey rather than think, there will be Templars to reward their obedience with wealth, power and influence; while the Assassins are literally born of lifetimes of discipline and self-study, the Templars are even more resilient than the Assassins because they're not even an idea - they're the absence of one. On the other hand, this also means that they will never succeed fully, since obedience, as Warren Vidic laments, "doesn't always take."

Haytham Kenway: Even when your kind appears to triumph, still, we rise again. And, do you know why? It is because the Order is born of a realization. We require no creed! No indoctrination by desperate old men. All we need is that the world be as it is. And this is why the Templars will never be destroyed!

I Need No Ladders: While you technically can and do use ladders, very often in the series simply running up the wall next to a ladder is faster than climbing it.

Informed Attribute: The games always maintain that the Animus is essentially like the Pensieve of Harry Potter i.e. it shows the real past, and Assassin's Creed I states that any Artistic License  History that we see is a case of conventional history being Written by the Winners. The problem is that much of what the Animus shows is more or less Hollywood History and rarely goes beyond The Theme Park Version and Pop-Cultural Osmosis. For instance, historical Templars and Templar-allies are such figures as Caesar, Cleopatra, Rodrigo Borgia, Charles Lee, Robespierre. For the Templars to have rewritten history and given their views a Historical Hero Upgrade, these figures should ideally enjoy a heroic reputation in the universe of the AC series when in fact all of them are disreputable figures, some of whom are victims of a Historical Villain Upgrade, and the games portrayal of their lives can be in many respects even more stereotypical and unfair than other historical fiction dealing with said individuals. This also makes one question how successful and effective Templars really are at rewriting history, and how effective Abstergo really is.

Invisible Writing: Many instances exist of characters using Eagle Vision in order to see hidden messages. The first game infamously ended with Desmond discovering this ability and finding Subject 16's writings all over the lab where he was kept inside Abstergo. The "Jack the Ripper" DLC of Syndicate uses it for horror, with the messages being left by Jack to taunt Evie Frye.

It's All About Me: Many characters who defect to the Templars (including the Crusader, the Sentinel, Lucy Stillman and Shay Cormac) do so not so much because they believe in the Templars' cause or methods, but to avenge some perceived betrayal against themselves, their family, or their tribe/clan. Additionally, almost all of themnote with the notable exception of Lucy Stillman harbor an abundance of arrogance. Most think themselves special, above all others, and unique in history. This is probably why they have Suicidal Overconfidence when facing the humanoid murder machines known as Assassins. "Sure, you killed hundreds of guards, knights, nobles, high-placed holy men and emperors... but I'm better than all those other guys!" Every one of them also thinks the world (or the nations they immediately occupy) would be better off with himself in charge. As such, Lucy Stillman stands out for averting this trope; particularly since her true allegiance was only revealed after she was killed by an Apple-controlled Desmond.

Julius Beethoven da Vinci: As of Black Flag, the Sages. Through Born-Again Immortality, one individual has been recurring throughout history, in such guises as the Wandering Jew; Jacques de Molay, last historical grandmaster of the Templars; Black Bart the pirate; the Count of St. Germain; and possibly David Bowie. No, really.

Knight Templar: Unsurprisingly, the eponymous Templars are shining examples of such thinking. The Assassins tend to dabble in this philosophy at times as well but for the most part they exist as A Lighter Shade of Gray, not seeing free will and independent thought as evil but far from perfect or just.

Leap of Faith: The trademark skill of the Assassins (along with the Hidden Blade), consisting of a swan dive down into conveniently-placed haystacks; all recruits are required to perform this as part of their initiation as full Assassins.

Left Hanging: In terms of the wider story-arcs however, the following count:

The first game mentioned a Templar Satellite Launch which the Modern story of AC said was of great importance but the second game said that the real problem was the Solar Flare and in the third game, Abstergo called off the Satelitte launch after all, with the Templars stepping back from their grand plan for world domination in favor of mundane Abstergo Entertainment propaganda games.

Brotherhood's Subject 16 missions mentioned that Desmond has to find Eve, with vague messages concerning "your son". The importance of Eve keeps being referred to, with Aveline's prophecy disk and the Dead Kings DLC mentioning "the lady Eve" but has generally been a loose end and Black Flag retcons Subject 16's rambling coming from Post-Historical Trauma. Syndicate reveals that the comment about Desmond's son was accurate.

In terms of historical story, the later lives and careers of Connor, Aveline and Shay have generally been unmentioned despite the fact that two games take place in the same time of their later careers.

Legacy Character: The basic premise of the games is that Desmond is a convergence of the bloodlines of Altaïr Ibn-La'Ahad on his mother's side, and Ezio Auditore da Firenze and Connor/Ratohnhaké:ton (and two prior generations of male Kenways) on his father's side.

Like Reality Unless Noted: Most of the time, it's a straight-up Historical Fiction... right up until strange, almost-alien artifacts appear. The fact that the games focus 95% of the time on the historical period helps to drive home just how wrong these artifacts are for intruding into human history.

Long Dead Badass: Every Assassin whose life is relived through the Animus is this from a modern day perspective, and every Assassin from a sufficiently distant previous era is this for the player character (like Altaïr, who's been dead for over 250 years by Ezio's time).

Lost in a Crowd: A common way for Assassins to essentially hide in plain sight by surrounding themselves with different sort of mobile camo ranging from praying monks to a a flock of courtesans.

MacGuffin Super Person: On very rare occasions, there are human Pieces of Eden. Altaír encountered one such person called Adha. During the Salem Witch Trials, the local Assassins discovered a human host of Consus whom the Templars were after.

In the first game, Altaïr was busted down to the lowest rank, meaning he has to do the grunt work of preparing the ground and investigating his targets. Since he still has his Master Assassin skills, he's also the one to do the killing.

In the second game, Ezio is unaware of the larger Assassin network for most of the game and so operates largely on his own with whatever allies he has personally recruited.

In III, Connor is the sole active member of the Brotherhood. Naturally, almost everything the Brotherhood accomplishes is due to him. The trope is also present in the Fake-Out Opening with the presumed Assassins doing everything personally. After it's revealed they are Templars, they gain large numbers of Mooks to do their bidding.

In Unity, Arno chooses to strike out on his own often, a tendency that aggravates the Assassin Council. This, among other things, causes them to expel him from the Brotherhood, leaving him without a support network for the rest of the game.

The Man Behind the Man: Juno, who is responsible for everything that happened in the games so that it would benefit herself at the end.

The Man Is Sticking It to the Man: Assassin's Creed is a game about a Mystery Cult of proto-anarchist secular humanists who advocate murder of political opponents, and yet its a Cash Cow Franchise for a major corporation. The meta-narrative of Abstergo hangs a Lampshade on it with the Templars converting Assassin memories into gaming products by feeding the public a safe fantasy with the illusion of transgressiveness while using it to spy and assimilate the world. This also comes with a nice touch of Self-Deprecation; Abstergo Entertainment's main collaborator in making their in-universe games is none other than Ubisoft itself!

"Altaïr" is Arabic for "the flying one" or "the flying eagle." Altaïr is also the name of the brightest star in the constellation Aquila, which is Latin for "Eagle". In full: Altaïr Ibn-La'Ahad is "Flying Eagle", "Son of None".

"Miles" means "soldier" in Latin.

The Italian name "Ezio" derives from the Greek word aetos, which means "eagle".

'Animus' is Latin for "soul", and in Modern English usage it can refer to a grudge or purpose (hence the slightly more common word "animosity").

'Animus' is also one of two parts of the unconscious mind according to Carl Jung, the other one being 'anima'. Several important female characters share names with the four development stages of the anima: Eve, Helen (of Troynote Only referenced in II's Glyphs), Maria (Thorpe, Auditore), Sofia (Sartor, Rikkin).

Malik Al-Sayf is Arabic for "King of Swords".

"Connor" means "Wolf Kin" or "Lover of Wolves" which reflects on his more predatory Assassin style, while his Native American name Ratonhnhaké:ton is commonly described in English as meaning "life that is scratched", which is pretty apt.

Grandfather Edward James Kenway shares his first two names with English kings. He also names his ship the Jackdaw and his son Haytham (Arabic for young eagle) because of the resonance of Aesop's fable of The Eagle and the Jackdaw symbolizing his overreaching aspiration to be more than a Welsh peasant, a "man of quality".

Abstergo means "to wipe off/clean away" in Latin, indicative of what they're doing to human history.

Mineral Macguffin: From Brahman onwards, the Templars are shown looking for the Koh-I-Noor Diamond, which is a Piece of Eden capable of boosting the powers of other POEs. By the modern day, they've no idea where it's gotten to. It eventually turns out it was buried in Spain, during the rise of Franco, and remained there ever since.

Mobstacle Course: Fortunately, you can shove them away. In the second game, Ezio can create these with well-aimed money tosses. It's a pretty convenient way of blocking pursuing guards for a few seconds while you're running away. In Revelations, Ezio can use a Pyrite Bomb to scatter fake coins at a distance, distracting guards and civilians alike.

Ironically, this happens to the Assassins: Initially a society devoted to achieving peace through individual freedom and personal responsibilitynote something that Templar Grand Master Haytham Kenway would centuries later call a much more sensible goal, over time they found themselves increasingly dedicated just to opposing the Templars, with their lofty ideals all but forgotten. They are called on this during Assassin's Creed III, both by the Templars and, at the end, by Those Who Came Before.

Happened to Templars as well, during the rule of the Borgia; Robert de Sable was a Well-Intentioned Extremist, and Haytham Kenway would be even more well intentioned and less extremist, but Rodrigo Borgia is using the Templar agenda of "control" to achieve his dreams of unlimited wealth and personal power, while he is enjoying incest, pedophilia or incest pedophilia... and his son Cesare is no better. Although his "Great Minds of History" portrait depicts him as a "man of faith and passion [who] suffered under a smear campaign under the hands of his enemy, Ezio Auditore" who instead should be remembered "for his progressive outlook and focus on family values", privately the 21st-century Templars consider him an Old Shame who, with the Order "Blinded by greed and personal ambition" and forgetting its purpose, led the Order into "dark times for us", and even admitted that "greater men pushed on, becoming what we should have aspired to be: true pioneers of scientific research. It was because of them that the era came to be called the Renaissance."

A side-mission in Origins reveals that the Templars have undergone Motive Decay from the start - the earliest known version of the Order, the Order of Ancients, was founded to investigate the Isu in Ancient Egypt. At some point, acquiring Isu artifacts became secondary to oppressing people in the name of "order".

Motive Rant: Most of the primary mission targets, upon being taken down, deliver a lengthy monologue about why they did what they did and why you're a terrible, misguided person for opposing them. Unity did away with this, instead showing bits and pieces of the target's life elaborating why the victim warranted execution, as well as hints to what they were planning before they were struck down.

Multi-Melee Master: All the Assassin characters are equally adept at any weapon they pick up, whether it be a knife, sword, axe, mace, etc.

The Assassins, both in the past and present. While the 1191 Assassins seem fairly close to the historical Muslim sect since the depicted Assassins have been identified as the Levantine branch thereof, the Assassin Tombs that can be visited in Assassin's Creed II house the remains of Mongol, Chinese, Roman, Egyptian, Persian, and Babylonian Assassins. Assassin's Creed III' and Assassin's Creed III Liberation add Native American, British, French, and African to the mix. The Templars can also be seen as an evil version of this.

On start-up, the player is assured that the game was created by one of these, so that they won't presume that the game is biased in favor of or against one particular faith or race.

Multiple Demographic Appeal: The games as a whole are Genre-Busting with Stealth, Action Adventure, Sandbox, Puzzle and RPG elements. The stories and historical settings likewise appeal to a wide range of audiences and has gained the series a lot of fans from demographics that usually don't play games but come in for the architecture and historical recreations.

Somewhat ironically, it's the Templars who seem to immediately default to this when faced with any problem, whereas the Assassins (whose name implies their intent to murder people) appear at times to be willing to at least pursue alternative solutions, including diplomacy or guile. For example, Altaïr and Al Mualim have a couple of conversations in which it's suggested they only resort to assassination against people who are simply too stubborn or fanatical to be talked out of their harmful course of action.

As demonstrated by shown by Connor in ACIII and in some of Project Legacy memories though, Assassins of later centuries weren't above a "kill first, question later" tendency either, on the basis of the belief that their targets were Always Chaotic Evil, and unwilling to concede that the Jerkass Has a Point. Also, as shown with Connor again and even Ezio, they sometimes seemed to ignore or dismiss any collateral damage of their actions, such as Ezio setting Cappadocia in a panic by blowing up the arsenal, killing hundreds by fire and smoke inhalation, and later letting a tyrant on the throne of Constantinople because the alternative, his brother, is a Templar. As both Haytham and Rebecca Crane bemoan, their war with the Templars ended up taking priority over their previous progressive and peace-making mindset from Altaïr's time.

Myth Arc: The war of humanity is the framing arc for the whole story. The main games are merely glimpses into the greater war between the Assassins and Templars, but the greater arc is about a 3-way battle between the aforementioned groups and Those Who Came Before, aka the Isu. Especially Juno, the Precursor Villain for the series.

"We saw the Nephilim there. We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them." Imagine trying to explain all this to a two-year-old. To a grasshopper. When they said the will of the gods was unknowable, they meant it - literally."

The Eagle Vision changes from game to game to provide new abilities as and when required by gameplay and plot. Altaïr's eagle vision was basic and limited, Ezio's is more robust, serving as secondary thermal vision with a blink of an eyelid and in Revelations he gets Eagle Sense, where he can reconstruct events from the past (track Altaïr's shade at Masyaf) and record trajectories of people he's tailing compared with ghostly images of them moving. Connor's Eagle Vision is more basic, while Edward Kenway can track people walking through walls. In Unity, Arno's Eagle Vision can give him insights into the memories of his targets as they are dying while Shay's Eagle Sense develops a Spider-Sense that warns him of an approaching Assassination attempt.

The Pieces of Eden were originally restricted to Apples, which are absurdly powerful objects capable of mind control, to creating illusions. Their powers vary from creating illusions, inducing mind control and then later becomes a Instant-Win Condition which reigns down death all around the protagonist. II reveals there were also swords and staves scattered across history. The fact that the First Civilization have scattered Lost Technology across humanity becomes less and less impressive when one sees the frequency and variety of objects and vaults with power spread across landscapes. The only games that do not revolve around gaining new technology as a central focus of Assassins - Vs- Templars is III and Freedom Cry where the actual issues - Revolution and Slave Liberation - take precedence.

Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: A stated appeal of the series is its ability for cultural mix-and-match on pure Rule of Cool situating it within a solid historical grounding more or less. Egyptian Medjay, Syrian Crusaders, Florentine Noblemen, Native Americans, an African American woman, a Welsh pirate, a Frenchman, and Victorian-Era British twins have all counted themselves among its ranks at various periods in human history.

Haytham Kenway: Even when your kind appears to triumph... Still we rise again. And do you know why? It is because the Order is born of a realization. We require no creed. No indoctrination by desperate old men. All we need is that the world be as it is. And this is why the Templars will never be destroyed!

Assassin's Creed III uses Decomposite Character to divide the historical Charles Lee into a character that is mostly In Name Only in both looks and background, while Haytham Kenway, the true Big Bad shares more in common with the real Lee, namely his romance with a Mohawk chieftain's daughter resulting in the birth of a son (the Player Character Connor).note The writers admitted they did this because they didn't want to actually have a fictional character be related to a historical one, since it created problems for its DNA-based Myth Arc

Likewise the Templar La Touche has greater biographical and visual resemblance to Maximilien Robespierre than the game's own portrayal of Robespierre. He starts out as a honest bureaucract who slowly resorts to violence, wears a pair of spectacles (much like the real man) and finally quotes a famous speech of Robespierre saying that Terror "is nothing but justice, prompt, severe and inflexible."

The player characters never actually die; Desmond gets "desynchronized" from their memories, so the Animus re-initializes them.

Assassins can deliver supposedly non-lethal finishing moves when fighting unarmed. Considering you still hear necks snap and see spines bend way too far to be healthy, the "non-lethal" part might just be on paper.

Not So Different: A recurring theme in all the games is that the Templar will point out to the Assassin that their goals and methods are actually quite similar. In the very, very long view, yes. In the very, very short view, yes. In the middle view, no. Both groups use targeted murder and secrecy, and both groups claim special guidance (short view). Both groups seek peace, justice, and prosperity for all mankind (long view). The Assassins want to free everyone to seek wisdom on their own, the Templars want to control and dominate everyone to force them to follow the Order's own wisdom (middle view).

Older Than They Think: In-universe. The Templars and Assassins are way older than either of those Middle-Ages names suggest. There has always been some group trying to take over the world and some other shadowy group trying to stop them by any means, going at least back to ancient Rome and ancient Egypt. Even if one side gets completely wiped out, someone somewhere will come up with the same idea to start it up again (resistance movement or dominate-the-world). Altair even muses on the fact in his Codex, speculating whether both groups are just ideas that both groups had rediscovered.

Old Save Bonus: The later games add outfits from previous games if the player has played them, tracked through U-Play/Ubisoft Club.

Olympic Swimmer: Starting with the second game, all playable characters can swim perfectly and for any length of time without tiring, no matter how much armor they are wearing, except that they can't hold their breath forever underwater. Assassin's Creed III adds a limited immunity to hypothermia and/or frostbite; the player gets desynchronized if they stay in the icy water for too long.

Having failed at it the first time around, Those Who Came Before grant this upon themselves in service of stopping humanity from being wiped out in 2012. The long struggle between the Assassins and Templars, all the wars and suffering, is part of their plan. Ezio very nearly hangs a lampshade on it in Revelations.

Ezio: Maybe you will be the one to make all this... suffering worth something in the end.

Then it turns out in III that not all of it was their plan. Minerva contemptuously states that mankind squandered her peoples' gifts and warnings in their petty feuds. At the very least, she never planned on the Assassin-Templar feud. Of course, this is also when we learn that Those Who Came Before were not themselves united, and that Juno had her own plan, which required forcing Desmond to make the choice he faced there. Without the feud, the problem would have been solved, and Juno wouldn't have been freed from her prison...

The series is like this most of the time. There are some missions that desynchronize you for being detected, but by and large it's just as doable to fight all the guards as it is to sneak past them or stealth-kill them.

There's also the first Assassins Creed game, and the second one, for the most part. Later ones have tended to avert this by punishing being caught with instant game overs.

Order Versus Chaos: The conflict between the Assassins and the Templars is a somewhat nuanced version of this: The Assassins' ultimate goal is to safeguard human freedom, even if that means performing the occasionally necessary evil (assassinating people dangerous to human freedom), and also means allowing humanity to make their own mistakes. At the same time, they live by a strict code (the titular Assassins Creed) which, among other things, prohibits the killing of innocents and encourages them to seek inner peace. In contrast, the Templars want to end human suffering by bringing an end to free will and creating a society of perfect order. At the same time, their belief that there is no afterlife and thus no higher law means that they are free to do whatever they want in pursuit of this goal, up to and including the slaughter or enslavement of millions if it will save millions more in the long term. The Templars' complete lack of any moral rules beyond their singular Utopia Justifies the Means goal seems to explain why the organization is overwhelmingly made up of monsters.

Our Ancestors Are Superheroes: While Desmond Miles knows he grew up in an assassin compound, he is shocked to discover the truth about his ancestors. Both Altair and Ezio, for example, have the Eagle Vision ability, which allows them to distinguish friend from foe and even see things that are hidden. Due to the "bleeding effect" of the Animus, he gains that ability as well. The assassins were also master engineers, as they had technology centuries ahead of the rest of humanity. Not to mention the whole First Civilization plotline, which is pure Advanced Ancient Humans.

For the Assassins, its Altaïr ibn La'Ahad, who already in the Ezio games is regarded as the Big Good, his Codex being a major source for inspiration and guidance for the Italian Renaissance. Altaïr developed cells in different countries, brought Niccolo and Maffeo Polo into the fold and even allowed the traditional, historically known front of the Assassins crumble before the Mongols so that they can move into the Shadows to better match the Templars cloak and dagger ideological power.

For the Templars, its the real-life Jacques de Molay, the last known Grand Master who was burned by King Philip le Bel. According to the lore, he committed a Heroic Sacrifice and scattered the Templars knowledge and directed the Templars to become the underground secret society of Conspiracy Theory lore. In Unity the new Templar Grandmaster rediscovers his teachings and sets out to revive his vision during the The French Revolution.

Haytham Kenway and his son Connor are on opposite side of the Templar and Assassin conflict, with Haytham being Archnemesis Dad. Both of them hope that they can form a bond and set aside their differences, but alas Poor Communication Kills and in the end Haytham tries to choke his son to death only for Connor to stab him in self-defense; Connor is haunted by this action.

Pacifist Run: Going fully pacifist is not an option, but you don't need to slaughter everyone either. Assassin's Creed 3 added melee as a viable option in stealth, and this persisted until Rogue. Unity changed the weapon system, with blunt weapons being non-lethal, and stealth knockouts, while still possible, take much longer, making the hidden blade the better option. Syndicate keeps knockout stealth, but all combat is now lethal. Origins appears to keep stealth attacks restricted to non-lethal, as targets will writhe in pain on the ground where you knock them out, or in the bushes or tall grass from where you attack. The only lethal stealth attack seems to be shots from your bow.

Nearly everyone in the games who is either an Assassin or a target of an Assassin has amazing free-running skills, even people you wouldn't expect to like overweight (and heavily dressed) Church officials. Assassin's Creed III takes it a step further by moving from urban settings to colonial and forested environments; thus the moniker "tree-running".

This series became the Trope Codifier for video games. Many games previously had some sort of building-scaling, but AC was the first game to have the character actually reach out to various handholds and footholds on what would otherwise be something completely impassable, even for Batman. Follow the Leader kicked in; inFAMOUS and The Saboteur are two of the bigger ones.

Plague Doctor: Assassin's Creed II and Brotherhood have NPC doctors in this costume (which is appropriate for Medici-era Italy). Not all doctors of the era were dressed like that, but it makes it easier to spot them.

While Assassin's Creed I was considered daring in its time for having an Arab protagonist and portraying a revisionist view of The Hashshashin, many noted that it ended up making The Crusades a backdrop to a secular dispute between two secret societies, when this was a major conflict driven by religion. Most Assassins likewise tend to be Secular Hero with the brotherhood featuring "liberated nuns" like Sister Theodora in Assassin's Creed II or harmless and theologically suspect priests like the one on Connor's homestead in Assassin's Creed III.

Patrice Desilets mentioned that in Assassin's Creed IIhe wanted to make Leonardo da Vinci's homosexuality explicit and mention the fact that the real-life Leonardo faced charges for sodomy in Florence, but the producers insisted they remove it. While Leonardo's homosexuality is hinted at in the vanilla game of both II and Brotherhood, only the optional DLC for Brotherhood featured a direct acknowledgement.

Despite the fact that the games are set in events central to Jewish history — the Crusades, the Renaissance, the French Revolution — none of the major games feature Jewish NPCs or supporting characters in any of the playable main and side missions, with barely any mention to the institutional and systemic anti-semitism operating in this timenote The exceptions are the presence of the wooden Synagogue in Jerusalem in Assassin's Creed I and some of the missions in Assassin's Den in Brotherhood and Revelations neither of which is playable by the main character. There's also the fact that the games demonize figures like Pope Alexander VI and Maximilien Robespierre who were rare major political figures who contributed positively to Jewish rights while having the Assassins ally with the fiercely anti-semitic King Philip IV to persecute Jacques de Molay. Likewise, the depiction of Rome in Assassin's Creed Brotherhood does not have the famous Jewish quarter, filled with refugees from Spain and France, patronized by the Borgia's support. It took until Assassin's Creed: Syndicate for the series to feature major Jewish NPCs — Karl Marx and Benjamin Disraeli.

The games set in the New World however avert this: Assassin's Creed III, Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag, Liberation, Freedom Cry deal with colonialism, native displacement, slavery and racism. Syndicate however returns with the lack of emphasis on colonialism, the greater melting pot of Victorian London, imperial politics and the fact that Jacob and Evie Frye flout a series of class and gender norms while facing no social reproach.

The Power of Love: The Assassins come around to believing that love is the great unifying force that binds man to society and each other. Altaïr rejected Al Mualim's austerity believing that Assassins keeping families will only make them strive that much harder to fight for a better world for them. Ezio later guides Shao Jun on the same way:

Ezio Auditore: Love binds our order together. Love of people, of cultures, of the world. Fight to preserve that which inspires hope, and you will win back your people.

Precursors: Those Who Came Before — an ancient and powerful race gifted with a sixth sense that let them sense a great deal more about their environment and the people in it, including motivations, the past, and the future, than mere humans could ever hope to see. Depending on where you look, they may come in at least two varieties, as we see through the course of the games. See Abusive Precursors and Benevolent Precursors above.

The first is in Assassin's Creed II where via bleeding effect we play as Altaïr in a brief sequence. In Revelations this is taken further with brief missions as Altaïr being a major selling point. In fact, the main goal of the game is for the present-day Player Character to find the main memory of his ancestral Player Character viewing that of the firstPlayer Character.

Played with, during the epilogue of Rogue, Shay is in Paris during the events of the prologue of Unity and he briefly walks past the young Arno before killing his father Charles Dorian. Since Rogue and Unity came out the same year and the same time, its not clear that either game qualifies as "previous", and this is more of a case of the same scene from two different points of view.

Professional Killer: They are called Assassins for a reason. All the games, however, explore the morality of being a person who literally kills for a living — in Altaïr's case, the question is whether his blind allegiance to his Creed makes him Not So Different from his enemies; while in Ezio's case, the question is just how much death is justified in the service of vengeance; Connor wants freedom, but those around him are too busy fighting to notice the chaos around them. Notably, the characters come to very different conclusions.

Sofia: This is not your battle. Ezio: But where does one end, and the next begin?

Ragnarök Proofing: Invoked; the First Civilization designed the Pieces of Eden and the Vaults that house them specifically to withstand the ravages of the 75,000 years that have passed since the First Catastrophe.

When Thieves steal from people, they openly run up to them and do the deed visibly. No one protests. But when Ezio does it sneakily, the victim can somehow recognise him and try to fight back.

The Assassins as a whole rest entirely on this. They believe in strict operational secrecy and a binding commitment to not compromise their order, their location, and their ways, yet they also believe in over-the-top public assassinations of officials as a way of sending across a message.

If the optional objectives allow for it, or if you don't care about them and play however, you can disregard stealth entirely and run straight to the target and assassinate him in full view of everyone. Even the target sees you coming, he just doesn't know what you're doing until you do it. This is mentioned in Unity during the Sivert assassination mission, where it's suggested that Arno "sacrifice himself to the cause" by doing exactly this as it sends a powerful message. He declines. You can still do it with no issues and even get the optional objectives done.

Replay Mode: The Animus provides a justified example as the story you play in the games is being relived by the descendant of the historical character. Thanks to this, the Animus will allow the player to replay any of the sequences in the game by accessing the synchronization info tab in the pause menu; this is helpful both to replay the missions and to complete any synchronization that was left pending due to the failure of some objective. This is Averted in Assassin´s Creed II in which you can only replay one specific mission with the DLC.

Research, Inc.: Abstergo does research and helps fund a secret society, though Word of God is that the overwhelming majority of their and their subsidiaries' membership are unaware of said secret society and are entirely sincere in having no secret agenda in their work; said secret society is simply appropriating the bounties of and "guiding" the direction of said work.

This trope is actually a plot point in the 2016 movie; Sofia genuinely believed that her work with the Animus was for eradicating violence, while her father Alan Rikkin wanted the Piece of Eden for the sole reason of annihilating the Assassins.

The Resolution Will Not Be Televised: Several major plot points of the present day storyline from Black Flag through to Syndicate (Juno, the Instruments of the First Will, the Phoenix Project, the Koh-I-Noor Diamond, Desmond Miles' Sage son) have their conclusion depicted in the Uprisng comic.

Revision: An acknowledged one. The "Truth" Subject Sixteen showed in II depicted George Washington holding an Apple and alongside several Templars who used Pieces of Eden to control the world. When III showed that Washington was an enemy of the Templars, Shawn argues that this doesn't contradict the Truth as all that showed as explicit fact was that Washington owned an Apple at some point. From a meta perspective, this does come off as a bit of a hamfisted justification for how this isn't really a Retcon, though.

Romanticism Versus Enlightenment: It's kind of hard to decipher where the Assassins and the Templars align on this spectrum. Both of them are pro-science but the Templars believe that knowledge is the province of the enlightened and worthy few individuals who can understand, assimilate and harness it for power and the greater good and actively hold back technology until they feel its ripe for progress and manipulation. The Assassins on the other hand believe that knowledge ought to be free and serve humanity as a whole and people should be given complete access to education and universal ideas.

Scenery Porn: Panning over beautiful vistas of old-world cities is a series mainstay.

Self-Deprecation: As of Liberation and Black Flag, Abstergo has started selling genetic memories as highly advanced videogames, playable on home Animus entertainment systems. Black Flag uses this development to make fun of the videogame industry and the series itself, as well as imagining what a lazy tie-in hollywood movie might look like.

Since the series sticks close to history and history often lacks neat dramatic structures, the series as a whole uses a variety of plots like this.

The end of Assassin's Creed IIIcontroversially turned the entire Myth Arc from the first game and the Ezio Trilogy into this. The quest by the Ancestors to pass on a message to Desmond to avert a Disaster was all a ploy by Juno to return to life. Desmond's absorption of his ancestor's memories and abilities were ultimately of no greater purpose than to sacrifice his life for Juno's return. In addition, the intellectual quest of Altaïr to garner as much knowledge as possible, as well as Ezio's spiritual search for his place in life and Connor's yearning for justice is likewise manipulated by Juno to historically relay said message to Desmond.

Shared Universe: Shares a universe with Watch_Dogs in the form of e-mails in Black Flag revealing Abstergo's interest in the ctOS and in Watch_Dogs in the form of Aiden Pearce assassinating Olivier Garneau on behalf of the Assassins.

Shown Their Work: Throughout the series, Ubisoft shows a remarkable amount of detail into the various historical settings, from the people and their mode of dress to the architecture. Sometimes they use broad strokes to distort history, but this is more often a case of Rule of Cool, Rule of Drama, or some of the exigencies ofthe video game medium than any deliberate error (for example, almost all doctors in Renaissance Italy dressed up as Plague Doctors because that getup is both extremely freaky-cool looking, and produces an easily identifiable figure/silhouette so the player can find medicine-and-healing-dispensers quickly and easily, despite their beak masks dating back to the 17th century, about two centuries later).

Sigil Spam: Both the Assassins and Templars put their respective logos on seemingly everything, but the titular Assassins really take it Up to Eleven. Their capital "A" symbol is visible somewhere on virtually everything they use; it's on flags above their HQs, it's engraved into their weapons, it's stitched into their clothing, it's cut into their clothing (they are fond of split capes that are cut so as to form a clear representation of the Assassin "A", with the distinctive inward curve at the bottom edges to make it very clearly not a coincidence) and in some cases it's even worked into their architecture. To a lesser degree, the Templars and Abstergo do this with their respective logos, but it's mostly restricted to their flags, weapons, and metal accessories (like buckles). You'd think the two halves of a secret Ancient Conspiracy older than civilization itself would be more circumspect with advertising their allegiances.

Zig-zagged by the Templars in modern day. They don't use the cross symbol that much in modern day, they're Villain with Good Publicity hiding behind Abstergo Industries, which indeed uses its logo a lot.

Simple, yet Awesome: Counter Attacking. In almost any game, holding the block button and pressing the attack button as an enemy is about to attack will result in your character blocking it and either scoring a One-Hit Kill, knocking your opponent on the ground in the first game — almost ensuring a kill anyway against non-boss enemies — or doing some damage to your opponent in all other games. It's also fairly easy with any weapon except the hidden blade, which guaranteed a counter kill on anything but the Final Boss, making it Difficult, but Awesome instead, or your fists (which doesn't do anything in the first game, but will attempt to disarm your attacker in other games).

Solar Flare Disaster: The First Civilization was all but wiped out when a solar flare hit Earth and caused it to become geologically unstable. The driving goal for the goals up until after III are to stop it from having a second go on the planet. On that front, the Assassins succeed.

Super Drowning Skills: In the first game, Altaïr desynchronizes if he falls into any body of water higher than his knees. This is lampshaded in the second game as a glitch in the Animus 1.0, and the main characters in II and all subsequent games are very capable swimmers no matter how much armor they wear. Other characters, including your Assassin Recruits, remain unable to swim until Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag.

Super Senses: Eagle Vision allows the user to see things that used to be present, that are present but normally not visible, traces of the past that simply shouldn't be visible, hints of the future, things that are hidden but important, and to know the motivations of others... it is a gift from Those Who Came Before. It is stronger in the Assassins, as the intended followers of Minerva's plan, but Black Flag shows that it's something which can be trained in many people, and can naturally and powerfully develop even in people outside the order (like Edward Kenway).

Stealth Expert: All Assassins are expected to be this, though with Gameplay and Story Segregation (not including Full Synchronization), its perfectly possible to charge headfirst. It also varies as per Player Character and changes in succeeding generations and generally, as the story progresses, the missions and player actions get less and less stealthy.

Altaïr is the stealthiest as per storyline and Synchronization objectives. Though even there it varies with some of his targets - Talal, Jubair, Abul Nuqood (though Jubair can actually be assassinated in stealth if done carefully) - having a chase mission and others such as Majd Addin being a Conspicuously Public Assassination which Malik calls him out on. He also straight up defeats the Templar Grandmaster in a Trial by Combat in the sight of King Richard the Lionheart which is hardly the quiet approach.

Ezio zigzags this trope, sometimes being stealthy and quiet and sometimes indulging in brazen public assassinations as in the case of Uberto Alberti, Francesco de'Pazzi, Marco Barbarigo (at the end of Carnivale Celebrations) and finally Rodrigo Borgia/Pope Alexander VI, an attempted Air Assassination in the middle of High Mass at a crowded Sistine Chapel, which is the opposite of subtle. More to the point the targets know who he is, by name and sight, but he still manages to get his man. He's much more stealthy in the middle of Brotherhood successfully eroding Cesare Borgia's power base under his very nose.

Connor is fairly stealthy as per Synchronization objectives but he also zigzags, first assassinating Jonathan Pitcairn in the middle of an open battlefield, successfully blending in with the chaos to get close and escape. All his other Assassinations are significantly less so, with Thomas Hickey leading to a chase in a crowded street only for both of them to end up in jail and then much later killing Hickey in broad daylight, before George Washington and a large crowd, his other targets are not stealthy at all.

Edward Kenway is highly sneaky and efficient as a stealth expert, actions which make him a brilliant pirate Captain and decent Assassin novice towards the end of the game.

Evie Frye is capable of becoming so still she becomes almost invisible to other people's perceptions, as opposed to her brother Jacob, who is usually anything but stealthy.

Talking Is a Free Action: Each and every primary assassination target gets to have a Just Between You and Me conversation with the player character, regardless of the circumstances under which they were killed. Said conversation takes place in the Animus' White Void Room, implying that the VR reconstruction of the event did not precisely match the actual memory.

Tempting Apple: The Apples of Eden are one of the more common types of Precursor artifacts; they were used originally as Mind Control devices and are highly sought by the Templars for that reason. Unrelated to the trope, the third game has the exact quote as the title of the achievement for finishing Memory Sequence 3; the more appropriate trope there would be Player Punch.

Assassin's Creed I and Assassin's Creed II the other games more or less dials down the role of religion in the actual medieval era, insisting that such religious sects as The Hashshashin and The Knights Templar were Hiding Behind Religion and really secular humanists. While this compromise makes commercial sense and fits with the overall meta-narrative, it ends up giving a distorted view of the period and history. Likewise, none of the European set games deal with anti-semitism in the open world despite it being a major part of the setting of the time.

The later games rarely tackle the importance of class and social background. The blending mechanic allows a Native American like Connor to hide in a group of Colonial Bostonians, a cockney thug like Jacob Frye to talk on even terms with the British Prime Minister, an Irishman who was Raised Catholic and with a thick accent like Shay Cormac to blend easily in a time when said identity (unless he converted to Protestantism) would mark him out as a second class citizen. Even the Florentine exile and disgraced nobleman Ezio Auditore easily interacts with a range of class groups in a time where costume, rank, title and appearance were crucial social signifiers. The only real aversions are Aveline and Adewale whose blending mechanic is complicated because of their race and gender which presents its own can of worms.

The games also codified Le Parkour in games as a climbing and traversal mechanic which simplifies both the human body and the surfaces and architecture of various cities to facilitate said gameplay. Other mechanics such as the naval gameplay of Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag is more or less a simplified and condensed simulation of naval combat with ships easily navigated the wind and the waves.

The Three Faces of Adam: Ezio's trilogy closely follows this, with ACII, Brotherhood, and Revelations respectively showing the Hunter, the Lord, and the Prophet phases of his life.

These Are Things Man Was Not Meant to Know: The Templars cover up knowledge of Those Who Came Before, and the origin of man, for this reason, figuring if people did know, there'd be mass shock and outrage (that, and to make sure no-one else finds out about them).

Tightrope Walking: All the playable Assassins (and Desmond) can run on certain incredibly thin ropes, wires, wood planks, and the like.

Title Sequence: Starting from Assassin's Creed II, each entry has featured a brief title sequence at a particularly significant composition just when the main music theme hits over the credits.

Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood has a Meaningful Echo to II where Ezio and Mario climb up a Church Tower and Ezio debates on whether or not he should throw the Apple or not. Both Uncle and Nephew take a leap of faith as the titles flutter over the Roman Skyline.

Assassin's Creed III has Haytham Kenway climb up to the Crow's Nest of a ship as he climbs over the fog covering the view of land in Boston Harbour. He gets his first glimpse of America and the New World, as the titles fill the screen.

Assassin's Creed Origins has the title not appear until after Bayek has assassinated his first target, and left Siwa for Alexandria. As he leaves the Qatara Depression, and gets a view of Alexandria, the title finally appears.

Translation Convention: This is in effect for any historical segments shown that do not take place in the Animus (such as the short films Lineage and Embers.)

Translator Microbes: The Animus automatically translates any foreign dialogue that takes place in it for the sake of the user (and the player). It doesn't do it perfectly, though, which gets a bit of Lampshade Hanging.

Averted. While each game ends on a Cliffhanger or Sequel Hook of some sort, the stories being told in each game is distinct. In fact you could consider Assassins Creed II as itself being split into three parts including Brotherhood and Revelations, linked together as Ezio's story. Supporting this is that once the series moves on to a new main protagonist it goes back to numbering the sequels.

Uneven Hybrid: Before dying out, The Ones Who Came Before hybridized some humans with their own DNA in an attempt to give them sufficient wisdom to understand the First Civilization's agenda. This worked only partially, and the bloodline of "Adam and Eve" has waxed and waned throughout the millennia. Those with a particularly strong reinforcement of the proper genes develop traits characteristic of the Assassin protagonists, such as Eagle Vision. note According to James Kidd in Black Flag, the capability for "Knowing" is latent in all of us, but we seldom learn to use it. Those with one very specific recombination turn into the Sage, the genetic reincarnation of Juno's husband Aita.

Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Averted. Bystanders will generally remark things along the lines of "WTF?!" when the protagonist climbs the walls of buildings, drops from above, and especially fights and kills people. They'll also gather around, say, a poisoned guard.

Uplifted Animal: All humankind is the uplifted animal, Those Who Came Before having uplifted homonids into homo sapiens (and a few others, including Neanderthals) to work as servants.

Utopia Justifies the Means: The mindset of the Templars. The Assassins for their part don't believe in Utopia at all, chiding the Templars for their clinging to easy solutions.

Villains Act, Heroes React: In most games, it's the Templars who come up with a plot that the Assassins then stamp out. This is a fact that they don't fail to point out every time. In most cases, it seems that the Assassins only play a key role in history by accident, while the Templar are actually trying to bring about a change, which they are then not able to control. About the only times the Assassins were truly proactive was during Ezio's era, when they brought the Renaissance to Rome and even that was driven by opposition to the Borgia. The Templars cite this trope as proof they have the moral high ground on the Assassins; they are constantly trying to improve the world and the Assassins are just pettily getting in their way without any real solutions to the world's problems because they just don't want the Templars to win. On the flip side, the Assassins are convinced that nothing the Templars could ever conceive within the bounds of their Order is even worth looking at as a solution, believing that the people's freedom to make a difference in their own individual ways is more important than the Order's incessant attempts to subvert this and bring the people under their control and direction. So the trope is indeed played straight, but the more important issue as far as their ideological conflict is concerned is what the Templars are acting against and what the Assassins are reacting for.

Villain Has a Point: It's fairly common for the Templars to have at least some truth to their cause or be attempting to fix some legitimate problem with society. Assassin reactions to this range from agreeing but finding the Templar's actions to be going too far, as in the case of Garnier De Naplouse note Who was treating the mental illnesses of the Holy Land and his death marked a sharp rise in the number of madmen the player encounters, but was still effectively torturing people., to rejecting the idea outright, as in the case of William Johnson note Who tried to seize native land to keep the natives safe from the colonists. Connor dismisses the threat, but anyone even remotely familiar with American history knows this an entirely reasonable fear..

In the first game, a lot of attention is given to Altaïr swords which are continually upgraded throughout the plot, but the promotion and the focus of the storyline is that of his special hidden blade for which he sacrificed a finger.

Connor has a lot of focus on the Tomahawk, though dual wielding in general is his thing. Desmond himself prefers two small knives in combat, using Connor's fighting style.

Edward Kenway wields Dual Cutlasses arced at a low angle to form the Assassin A.

Arno also tends to be seen with a rapier or his Phantom Blade, while Shay has his unique Templar prototype rifle.

What the Hell, Hero?: The Assassins have committed their share of moral hypocrisy and for this other characters hold their feet to fire.

Vali cel Tradat left the Assassins for the Templars because the Assassins allied with the Ottoman Empire and supported its conquest of Eastern Europe, including his homeland of Wallachia.

Altaïr points out a contradiction in his Codex: they kill whoever opposes them while declaring to support the freedom of humanity (which presumably would include being free to make wrong choices).

When All You Have Is a Hammer...: The Assassins' trademark action is assassinating people, even when conflicts could be solved in a peaceful manner. Most of the times, assassinations are justified, but it sometimes backfires: in Revelations, Ezio killed a mostly innocent general and in Rogue, Shay kills three Templars during his time with the Assassins, one of which was dying anyway and another was effectively useless; this later contributes to his defection to the Templars.

The Animus loading screen. The original Animus screen featured lots of hexagonal lines and bits of code scattered in the background, while Rebecca's Animus 2.0 had a simpler but cleaner white void with grid lines dividing up the empty space. The Animus 3.0 loading screen is a chaotic void of cloudy triangles.

As of Assassin's Creed: Syndicate, the Helix loading screen is white again - despite still being part of the Templar technology. However, with the amount of hacking the Assassins have done into the Helix, this could be their doing.

Origins depicts the loading screen as black once more, evidently due to the hardware of Layla's portable Animus.

Wrestler in All of Us: The playable characters are capable of pulling off wrestling moves as unarmed finishers such as suplexes, DDTs and dropkicks.

You Are Number 6: Abstergo brands its line of Animus users as Subject 'X', of which there were seventeen. Of these, we know the true names of Subject 2 (Warren Vidic), 4 (Daniel Cross), 16 (Clay Kaczmarek) and 17 (Desmond Miles). Throughout the games, there are scattered mentions of Subjects 1 (a male descendant of Aveline de Grandpré;) 12 (who had some connection to the Philadelphia Project) and 15 (a woman whose pregnancy messed with the Animus because it couldn't tell the difference between her and the baby).

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